Monday, July 27, 2009

Beijing - China scrapped the takeover of a steel plant, an official saidMonday, after workers killed a manager in a possibly unique instance ofindustrial mob violence claiming the life of a senior executive.

Workers at the Tonghua Iron and Steel Group beat to death newly appointedmanager Chen Guojun on Friday after he threatened to lay off up to 30 000people in a controversial restructuring, the China Daily reported.

Chen was killed when about 3 000 workers forced a production shutdown atthe plant in northeast China's Jilin province after they heardprivately-owned Jianlong Group was taking over Tonghua, the China Dailysaid.

"Chen disillusioned workers and provoked them by saying most of them wouldbe laid off in three days," the paper quoted a local police officeridentified only as Wang as saying.

After severely beating Chen, workers clashed with police and refused toallow medical personnel to attend the badly injured general manager. Chenwas declared dead late Friday after finally being taken to hospital.

"I have heard of cases where managers have been recently taken hostage intheir offices, but not beaten to death in this manner," said Jean-PhilippeBeja, research director at the Hong Kong-based French Centre for Researchon Contemporary China.

"As far as I know this is the first time, or in any case the first time ithas been reported," he said.

A spokesman with the Jilin provincial government confirmed the killing andthe protests when contacted by AFP on Monday, but refused to go intodetail.

"The Jilin provincial government has decided to stop the merger plan," theofficial, who gave the surname Li, said. "The police have launched aninvestigation into the killing."

Xinhua news agency said the government halted the merger plan "to preventthe situation from expanding", apparently referring to the worker unrest.

"In most privatisations of state-owned enterprises, workers are concernedthey are going to get laid off with desultory compensation that will onlylast a few years," Crothall of the China Labour Bulletin told AFP.

"But what gets them angry is that the whole privatisation process is doneunder a cloak of secrecy... there is a lack of transparency and rightly orwrongly, workers suspect wholesale corruption and a loss of state assets."

Further fuelling emotions is the fact that most workers, especiallymiddle-aged or older workers, know that it will be difficult to find newjobs, he said.

"The police will obviously have to do their duty and find the culprits...but it will be tricky," Crothall said.

"They realise the situation is very volatile and they don't want toinflame it further."

The Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy saidin a statement over the weekend that over 30 000 workers were involved inthe protest, while as many as 100 people were injured in clashes with riotpolice.

The workers had complained about Chen's alleged three-million-yuan (R3.4million) salary, as the mill's pensioners received as little as 200 yuan(R224) a month, the statement said.

China sees many large-scale protests each year, often sparked byallegations of government corruption and fuelled by a widening gap betweenrich and poor.

On June 15 in southern China's Dongguan city, a disgruntled worker at ametals company upset over compensation from a work-related injury slashedto death two Taiwan bosses and seriously injured another company manager.

The murder in Guangdong province was witnessed by over 200 people, theGlobal Times reported at the time.

State-owned Tonghua Group is the biggest steel maker in Jilin province andproduced seven million tonnes of steel last year, the company said on itswebsite.

In 2005, Jianlong sought to take over the company but backtracked lastyear as steel prices tumbled with the global financial crisis. - AFP